Mr. Speaker, this is such a timely motion in many ways because of the tragedy we saw with Amanda Todd, which everyone across this country knows about and is now a worldwide issue. I commend the member for bringing forward this motion.
While the Liberals will be voting in favour of it because it is a worthwhile motion, we think it does not go far enough. There is sufficient information out there with regard to bullying and all its forms. Studies have been done around the world and by the World Health Organization. We know that bullying has not only a physical toll but also a mental toll. We know that many people who are bullied get headaches, suffer from nervousness and anxiety, and can even get dizzy spells.
However, we also know that it can create depression in susceptible people and that it can create, in some instances, the ultimate tragic response of suicide. However, it is not only about suicide. There are people for whom bullying triggers a response of anger. We have seen people take a gun and go into a school and try to take out all the people who had bullied them or caused them such pain.
At the end of the day, bullying is not new. Bullying has been with us from the beginning of time. All of us understand it. All of us know about it. However, bullying used to be limited to school. It was some kid pushing, shoving or locking another student in a washroom and all of those kinds of things. It was mean girls who would call people names and treat them badly. Eventually, in the old days, the victims used to be able to grow up and leave school. They used to be able to go home to parents who could protect them and have a group of friends outside of school who could be there for them.
Bullying has changed. With the rise of electronic media, we know that bullying follows us everywhere. I remember speaking to a young woman before I brought in my private member's bill, Bill C-273, which seeks to put the issue of electronic and cyberbullying into the Criminal Code with other forms of criminal harassment, libel and spreading of false messages, et cetera. This young woman told me that she could not get away from the bullying. She said, “I go home and it is there. I turn on my email and it is there. I turn on my computer and it is there. I go away to spend holidays with my parents and family and it is there. It is everywhere”.
The new social media allow cyberbullying to reach around the world so that someone in Germany today knows what someone is saying about a person. The messages also reach through a person's lifetime and are there forever. It does not matter where we go or how old we are, somebody can Google something about us that happened when we were in grade 11 or when we were 12 or 13 years old. In fact, cyberbullying can prevent someone from getting a job. We know that happens. A boss looks a person up on Google and, lo and behold, there is something about him or her that is not even true. It is false messaging.
We know it can carry on even after death. It will always be there.
Cyberbullying has given a new aspect to bullying, not that any bullying is right. As my hon. colleague in the Conservative Party said, it is not a rite of passage. It is not something we can tut-tut and say that we know about that from when we were in school. It can have dire consequences, and it used to. Today, because of mass communications, we know of the many people who are hurt physically and mentally by bullying because it is out there for us to find. It is in the media. We can see it and hear it. It reaches beyond us. In the old days, even as long ago as when some of us were kids or before that, who knows how many people went quietly and committed suicide or hid away and became reclusive or had mental health problems as a result of bullying?
The motion is good in that it talks about a prevention strategy. However, it concerns me that there are no real concrete measures in this bill. It would ask us to study it and we have studied this many times before. Many of us can tell stories that are heartbreaking. We have heard some of them in the House today, so I will not repeat them.
However, there was a young woman named Donna who attended eighth grade at a parochial school in Montreal. She and her mother travelled to Toronto to visit her grandmother who was dying from cancer. When she returned to school, a cyberbully circulated a rumour alleging that she had gotten SARS. Her friends did not want to hang out with her. They all walked away from her. She was left desolate and alone. She did not know what to do. They would not even talk to her on the telephone. That happened in Welland, Ontario, where she lived.
I think we all know the story of the freshman in Osaka, Japan, who, when his gym period was over, got dressed in what he believed was the privacy of the gym. Indeed, he was an overweight boy and some bully set up a camera and took a picture of him. Within seconds, by the time he had changed and walked out of the room, his picture was around the world for everyone to see. He had become a laughingstock, not only of the school but of the community.
We know that cyberbullying, or any kind of bullying, does not really end. We like to pretend this is something that only happens in schools, but in fact we know that people can be shunned in the workplace. We know that people can be shunned in their communities, where their neighbours will not speak to them. We know that many people who are gay, young and old, are terrified of people finding out, whether in their workplaces or in their communities. We see the impact of bullying. It is physical. It is mental. As in the case of this young lady, Amanda Todd, this weekend, it can be tragic.
It would be a nice idea if instead of studying it, when we have already done that, we look at the kind of comprehensive national strategy that we always look at when we deal with something that can result in serious harm. Public awareness and education are parts of what we have to look at. We also have to look at prevention and prevention programs, which could take place in the school, home and community. We have to look at the programs we could have for young, and older, people who have been bullied and how we could help to protect them and create some harm reduction. Eventually, we have to look at the consequences. Some of those consequences may or may not be in the Criminal Code and should be in the Criminal Code.
The Criminal Code currently deals with issues such as name-calling, false messaging and criminal harassment, which is what we saw happening to this young woman. Her bullying was criminal harassment.
We know that if it happens on the radio or if it happens on TV or if it happens in the newspaper, there has to be disclosure. In fact, the Criminal Code even deals with it when it happens by telephone. If telephone messages are being spread, the telephone company has to, under the law, disclose where the phone calls came from. However, we do not have a single way to find out who is doing the bullying from cyberspace. There is an anonymity in cyberbullying that allows it to flourish. No one knows who these people are. They can feel free to say whatever they wish.
The sad thing is that when this young woman put her story out, people were saying, “Go ahead and kill yourself”.
I do not know what society we live in but it is not just enough to talk about a prevention strategy. Some provinces have legislation. Some provinces have programs. We need to work together, using federal and provincial jurisdictions, and look at schools, communities and the workplace. We need to recognize this for what it is: an extremely important, dangerous and tragic habit. I do not know what else to call it.
However, I do want to thank the member for bringing the motion forward. We will be voting to support it.
I do believe that we need to take this issue seriously. If someone had beaten this girl and left her in an alley or drowned her, as we know happened in the past to Reena Virk in Victoria, then everyone would be liable. However, because she committed suicide, people do not believe anyone is liable.
I think it is time we put an end to this.